*

Monday, July 29, 2013

By the mid '60s Detroit's dreams were already disintegrating into rubble.

The United States, the self-proclaimed greatest nation on earth, has a problem, and that problem is Detroit. American mythology is thrown into question by a city like Detroit: segregated, demoralized, bankrupt. Just a half century ago a mostly white workforce was earning possibly the highest average pay in the nation. In today's black Detroit more than a third of Detroiters are living below the poverty line.
At the core of Detroit's fall is the cancer of racism. Read what
Emilio DeGrazia had to say in his piece published in the Twin Cities Daily
Planet: Our American nightmare.

"Nobody wants to hear anyone explain Detroit’s problems in terms of race.
If black Detroiters fail, it’s all their own fault, and they’re just
playing out their victim roles when they ask for help. If they can’t
succeed at the American Dream, they’re not good enough.

"The American Dream has a tragic flaw that has made a nightmare of
Detroit. Central to this American Dream narrative we are routinely fed
at school, at work, and through the media is that America is the land of
boundless opportunity. We keep repeating the myth that everyone can
succeed here if they work hard enough. That they can do it on their own.
That losers are losers because they’re little engines that didn’t try
hard enough.

"Tell that silly tale . . . to an unemployed father whose
unemployed son wanders the streets, angry and depressed. . . . Tell it to the thousands of Detroiters who don’t go
to doctors because they have no health insurance . . .

"Tell them with a straight
face that they’ll succeed if they try harder . . . That we all
should be hard-working little engines is a nice idea, necessary for
teachers and parents to repeat as they try to inspire individuals to
live up to their potential . . . But it is not a credible groundwork
for public discourse or public policy."

Yes, Detroit is a failed black city. But why is it black and why has it failed?

The answer to the first question is simple: White flight. Whites fled the inner city as blacks burst out of the traditional black ghetto districts.

Black neighbourhoods are blue. Note overlap with Detroit city boundaries.

Examine the map of the Detroit region done by Eric Fischer.
The blue represents black residents. Note how the black neighborhoods stop abruptly at the border between Detroit and its surrounding
suburbs. The sharp division along Eight Mile Avenue didn't just happen but reflects a historic separation reminiscent of South Africa apartheid in the past.

Wall separating black and white neighborhoods still stands.

In the '40s a six-foot tall concrete wall, one foot thick in places, was erected to halt the migration of blacks north.

The
black neighborhoods were redlined, getting a bank mortgage was difficult if not
impossible for the residents. A wall was built in north Detroit to make it clear to the banks and other that the suburb was
serious about enforcing segregation. This kept the suburb free of blacks
and free of redlining.

No one stated the position of white suburbanites better than Orville Hubbard who was the mayor of Dearborn from 1942 until 1978. The rotund bigot said: "Housing the Negroes is Detroit's problem. When you
remove garbage from your backyard, you don't dump it in your
neighbor's."

"I'm not a racist," Hubbard once protested, "but I just hate those black bastards."

Blacks did not make a decision to "keep to themselves" as some argue. Blacks were refused admittance to suburbia. Blacks were trapped
in the Detroit ghettos of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley where they had been kept contained for a hundred years.

Media pundits often refer to the 1967 riot as the fuse that ignited white flight. The riot of 1943 is rarely mentioned. Nor is the riot of 1863. Nor the riots in between. But then the previous riots tended to be white riots, not black ones.

In truth, white flight kicked into high gear in 1950. At that time integration was becoming the goal; de facto segregation was to be the reality.

De facto racial segregation in the U.S.during the '50s and '60s was enforced not by Jim Crow laws as in the past but by tradition and by using market forces to halt the movement of blacks into all white neighborhoods.

Littlefield Street in Detroit.

The migration of blacks out of the traditional ghettos was called the blight and a neighborhood once infected was quickly abandoned by white residents.

White flight is not something new that came into being after the riots in '67. White flight was well underway when I was a young boy in the '50s. At that time Detroit's population
peaked at 1.85 million. By 1960, a decade later, the population
had fallen to 1.67 million despite, or more likely because,
approximately 200,000 blacks had migrated to Detroit from the South. According
to a Rutgers website, the percentage of whites in the population fell about 23 percent in those ten years.

I walked by these in the '60s while studying in Detroit.

Fifty
years ago abandoned housing was already a serious problem in Detroit. A
1961 University of Michigan study found 22 percent of the dwelling
units within 3 miles of downtown were empty.

After the 1967
riot whites went into full flight mode. 80,000 to 100,000 white residents fled the
city annually in the years immediately following the riot.

I saw the results of the race to the city exits unfold on Littlefield St. near Outer Drive. A white, '40s neighborhood flipped from totally white to almost totally black in just a few short years following the '67 riot.

I knew an accountant living on Littlefield. He and his wife bought their home new and it was in this home that they had raised their family. It was a good place to live. When the first blacks moved in housing values dipped. My friend did not move but many of his neighbors were frightened. They rushed to be the first to put a "For Sale" sign on their lawn. House prices plummeted.

This was a financial disaster not just for the whites who remained but for the first blacks who had moved into the neighborhood. With home values plummeting, homes became rental units, often divided in order to hold more than one family. Today there are almost no whites in the area and the original block-busting blacks have also deserted the neighborhood. It is a story with no winners.

For more on this, read A House Divided in Washington Monthly by Thomas J. Sugrue. The University of Pennsylvania professor explains why middle-class blacks have far less wealth than whites at the same income level. He finds the answer in real estate and history.

At this point it is important to note that even though racism accentuated Detroit's fall, Detroit was already a city in trouble. Like so many other cities with rich, prosperous pasts, Detroit was taken down by:

outsourcing

obsolete technologies

bad business decisions

business mergers

automation

reshoring

Media pundits have found numerous ways to account for Detroit's decline. It's the fault of the ever greedy unions, the democrats and their left-wing ideology are behind it, or free trade killed the once prosperous factory town. They say Detroit put too much faith in one industry, the car industry. When the Big Three collapsed, so did the city.

The pundits tell good stories but for one problem; the stories aren't true. The so called bailout of Detroit prevented the closure of numerous auto plants across the United States; It did not save the City of Detroit — nor was that the intention. Car building and Motown have not been close for years. The marriage was dissolved decades ago.

Ford, one of the Big Three, hasn't built a car in Detroit since 1910 when production of the Model T moved to Highland Park to avoid paying Detroit's high city
taxes. Interesting fact: It was Highland Park where Ford introduced the moving assembly line — that's right, the moving assembly line was not a Motor City first.

Most of the car companies that gave Detroit its well known moniker, companies like Packard, Hudson, Essex, Hupmobile or even the Abbott Motor Car Company, are gone. The remaining Big Three have dispersed across the States, Canada, Mexico and the world. Very few cars are made today within the border of Detroit.

Consider Packard: When Packard closed its Detroit operation in 1957 it closed an industrial complex occupying 3.5 million square feet of space spread out among 47 buildings. At its peak the plant employed over 40,000 workers on a site spanning 35 acres. That plant, possible the largest abandoned factory in the world, has now stood almost empty for more than half a century.

Detroit is no more the Motor City today than it is The Stove Capital of the World — another nickname once given to Detroit. The Detroit Stove Works, was the largest stove plant in the world consisting of 23 buildings in 1948. It closed in 1957.

Detroit was once The Stove Capital of the World, not Motor City.

Detroit could just as well have been known for rail cars. At one point it was the largest maker of rail cars in the country. The first refrigerator car was produced in Detroit, an invention of Detroiter William Davis.

Back to the list detailing how communities commonly lose employers: outsourcing, obsolete technologies, business mergers, automation, reshoring and just plain bad business decisions. These companies, big Detroit employers, all fell victim to one or more items in that list. Take Parke-Davis, it was acquired by Warner-Lambert in 1970 and soon the move to Ann Arbour was underway. Over time the 26 building medical research campus was but a memory.

Many cities have suffered far less that Detroit from the loss of the communities traditional businesses. The ones that have suffered the most, like Detroit, almost invariably also have race problems. Without white flight and de facto segregation the Paris of the Midwest might have built on it heritage. Instead, Detroit was forced to desert its past to embrace a questionable future.

A bit of background for those who are interested

The ghetto known as Black Bottom earned its nickname during the early days of Detroit. French farmers staked out the area because of its rich, black, loamy soil, which was excellent for farming. The district became known as Black Bottom. When Blacks migrating North in the 1900s were herded into the neighborhood, the name took on a new connotation.

There were legal restrictions prohibiting Blacks from renting or owning property in all but the accepted Black neighborhoods. In fact, a Black could be tossed in jail if caught west of Woodward Avenue. The result was that over time the Detroit ghettos contained more Black owned businesses than could be found in any other city in the States.

Not to glamorize either Black Bottom or Paradise Valley, it must be said that the black ghettos in Detroit were moderately successful. With many of the residents holding jobs, admittedly menial, in local factories or working as railroad porters or other such jobs, the black businesses were profitable.

At night the ghetto came alive with cocktail lounges, dance halls, show bars and restaurants all featuring sultry singers and jazz and blues artists. Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong among others appeared in Detroit black clubs.

Outside the ghetto, Detroit blacks encountered open discrimination on
the factory floor and even in the union hall. White homeowners formed
citizen groups enforcing invisible residential color lines and in one
case a not so invisible line.

A half mile long concrete wall was built in 1941 to separate black and white neighborhoods on the northern border of Detroit — a concrete color bar.

The wall is just one example of Detroit's historical divisions. In
the 1950s and '60s, as more and more employment moved from the actual city of Detroit to the suburbs, the majority of white families followed but
discriminatory practices blocked that option for black families. As
a result, Detroit got poorer and blacker, while the suburbs got richer
and whiter.

If you were black, Detroit could be a downright nasty place. Citizen vigilantes burned crosses on the lawns of blacks, at certain times the Klu Klux Klan found a following and financial and municipal powers redlined entire neighborhoods. Detroit was an example of apartheid in action.

"The Detroit 'hate' riots erupted in June 1943 at Belle Island, a popular
segregated beach. On June 20, 1943, fights broke out between groups of
white and African-American youths. News of the altercation spread, and
by that night a full-scale riot had erupted. The Detroit police force
was unable to quell the disturbance; Detroit Mayor Edward Jefferies
requested assistance, but federal authorities were reluctant to
intervene.

"The violence escalated, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt
ordered military police and infantry regiments to disperse rioters late
on the second night of the riots. Order was restored, but in a day and a
half of rioting, 25 African Americans and 9 whites were killed, almost
700 people were injured, and 1,893 people were arrested . . . "

"In a very brief time, the now-familiar image of a black inner-city core
surrounded by a white suburban ring emerged as the dominant pattern of
American life. Thus did the "ghetto" become dominant in scholarly and
creative literature by the 1960s. The term "inner city" became a virtual
synonym for black people."

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Like her mother before her, little Isla finds it tough getting to sleep -- but you'd never know it from this picture. Isla drifts off quickly when there is a low level of white noise humming in the background. Isla's mother when young used to fall asleep to the sound of a vacuum cleaner running for no other reason than to put her to sleep.

Using white noise to quiet a baby is a well known trick. There are even white noise machines sold for this very purpose. But what happens when a traveling mother wants to put the little one to sleep and there is no Hoover nor Electrolux handy? Mom can make all right with a quick visit to the iPhone App Store.

Note the iPhone to the right of Isla. It is playing a vacuum cleaner app. The one Isla is listening to offers three free sounds, one of which is a vacuum -- her favourite. Apparently there are a number of apps emulating different vacuums. If your baby requires white noise to fall asleep, a solution is as close as your iPhone.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Storybook Gardens is an adventure park for young children. My granddaughter loves the place.

Springbank Park has been a place for Londoners to relax on a hot summer day for more than a century. Storybook Gardens has only been around about half as long but both have undergone lots of changes in their lifetimes.

Storybook was originally named for the storybook characters decorating the park. It also had a small, and inadequate by today's standards, zoo. Today all that remains of the zoo are mainly a few farm animals.

Slides are simple but great fun.

Attendance at Storybook has not kept up with the growth of London. Many feel storybook characters and a few goats, donkeys and the like are not much of a draw. They may be right, but if my granddaughter is any indication they may also be wrong. She loves Storybook Gardens.

The city takes a lot of flak for Storybook Gardens. All the criticisms may be not be completely on the mark. There may be more right with the park than many would like to admit. But there is admittedly a lot wrong with park; Stuff that only money and imagination can fix.

This is where it gets interesting. The city planning department is in the middle of the development of the master plan for London and one big piece of the planning picture is a new and improved downtown. A show piece of the new, vibrant core to be is a giant pool with a man-made beach at The Forks of the Thames.

The new water park is patterned after a pool built in Brisbane, Australia, as part of that city's riverfront redevelopment. The city planning department has gone so far as to illustrate their plan with a picture of the Australian pool, a multi-million dollar creation with some very high maintenance costs.

Reportedly the new city urban plan is being put together with a lot of input from city residents. This is a new approach and has been given a new name: ReThink London. Personally, I think ReThink needs a rethink.

Young children love the old carousel in Springbank Park despite its condition.

The city cannot maintain the popular carousel found in Springbank Park at the entrance to Storybook Gardens. How is the city going to maintain a new hugh, expensive pool with a sandy beach that requires the addition of tonnes of new sand every year.

Mirrors are broken or missing, light bulbs are out or gone, many of the merry-go-round horses are in need of a fresh coat of paint and some simple repairs -- many are missing their leather reins. Compared to a giant pool like the one in Brisbane, a carousel should be an easy thing to maintain. If the city cannot keep a merry-go-round presentable, how is the city going to maintain the new pool and beach at The Forks of the Thames?

The reins are missing.

Carousels are relatively safe rides for young children but maintenance is still important. Today I accompanied my granddaughter and her father to the park. While John and Fiona enjoyed the ride, a little girl not far from them got a big surprise: The leather rein she was gripping tightly broke free from her painted steed.

Little Fiona is only three but she knows to check the painted ponies before being lifted into the saddle. Many of the horses are missing their reins, and now I know that some of the remaining reins are not to be trusted. Sad.

I looked at the carousel. Decorative mirrors are missing or broken. As I write this I wonder about the wisdom of not replacing broken glass on a ride for children. Could a chunk of glass come free, fall and strike a child below? And many of the decorative light bulbs on the merry-go-round are missing, leaving open light sockets. Is this even legal?

Note the broken mirror and the missing light bulbs.

Over the past few years the city has spent quite a bit of money upgrading Storybook Gardens and moving it away from its storybook roots. From what I've seen in my visits, the new direction is taking the park in the right direction.

Still, maintenance is an issue. Today, it was very hot and at least one cold drink machine was out of order, a pole that should discharge a gentle, cooling mist refused to work and after buying drinks at a concession we found they were out of straws for my three-year-old granddaughter.

The staff at the park are excellent. I have lots of good stories concerning the young people operating the rides and concessions. The young people care about the little thinks that are oh-so-important to folks visiting the parks. It is too bad that the city doesn't seem to be as wise as their young staff.

Before London unveils a new recreational jewel at The Forks of the Thames, maybe they should be polishing the two jewels that are Springbank Park and Storybook Gardens.

Fiona holds still as she has her face painted by an artist at Storybook Gardens.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Resting on top of my bedside reading lamp, a polymer banknote was unaffected.

A London woman told The London Free Press that she placed an envelope, containing a number of hundred dollars bills, beneath a common table lamp. On returning a few hours later, she discovered the heat from the lamp had
shriveled her polymer currency.

The paper missed the story. The shriveled bills are not the story; The bills are the evidence — evidence of a seriously defective and incredibly dangerous table lamp.

What company makes such a monster and how many watts is the light bulb?
Is an old incandescent bulb screwed into the brute? This lamp is clearly a fire hazard as
polymer bills reportedly require about 140-degrees Centigrade
(284-degree Fahrenheit) to suffer heat damage. Don't believe me? Read what the Bank of Canada says about what they call the urban myth concerning melting notes.

Even if the Canadian government is overstating the temperature at which damage occurs, one can suffer a serious burn touching a hot surface at 90-degrees Centigrade for as short a time as half a second.

These bills surely reached a temperature higher than 90-degrees Centigrade to suffer so much damage. This lamp clearly poses a real danger to this woman and her family. In fact, The Bank of England has proven that even a temperature of 100-degrees Centigrade fails to cause any damage even after subjecting notes to this high temperature for a full hour.

This is not the first story about Canada's melting currency. A year ago newspapers across Canada carried a story based partially on anecdotal tales repeated by Brittney Halldorson, a teller at the Interior Savings Credit Union in Kelowna, B.C., claiming the polymer bills were melting and melding together.When I was a photographer with The London Free Press, I hated stories like this one. I would have wanted to take an oven thermometre with me to take a reading of the temperature below the lamp. (Surely the lady did not sit the bills right on the hot, light bulb. A hundred watt light bulb can reach a temperature in the range of 475 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface of the glass. If you don't believe me, check the book Kirk's Fire Investigation.)

Sadly, stories like this almost write themselves. The reporter could write the lede before even meeting the lady with the crinkled, shrunken currency. The LFP reporter wrote: "This isn’t money burning a hole in your pocket — it’s money simply burning up." I'm sure the angle of the story was set before the reporter, Kate Dubinski, even left the office. I doubt Kate inspected the lamp in question.

Despite the problems the London woman has had with polymer banknotes and an unbelievably hot table lamp, the new Canadian notes should last about four times as long in circulation as the traditional paper bills being removed from daily use. The new $5s and $10s will be released later this year.

The four times figure is based on Australia's experience with plastic bills. In New Zealand, the lifetime factor increase ranged from 4.5 to 7.3 depending on the denomination. The Bank of Canada’s assumption of a 2.5 factor is conservative.

Of course, all bets are off if you leave your plastic money under Super Lamp, a lamp so hot it's the stuff of urban legends.

__________________________________________________________
Two British Standards address hazards of hot, touchable surfaces. The British Standard EN 563 (1994), Safety of machinery – Temperatures of Touchable Surfaces – Ergonomics Data to Establish Temperature Limit Values for Hot Surfaces states that the burn threshold for contacting glass for a time of 0.5 seconds is between 183.2º F and 194º F (84º C to 90º C).

Snopes calls tales of melting Canadian money an urban legend. Their reporter agrees with the Bank of Canada.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Eloise, almost two, likes my carved elephant - a gift to me from her aunt Ashley.

I have a few followers who come here looking for pictures of my two grandchildren. These folk are mainly relatives who don't have a Facebook account. Today, for them, I am posting two pictures: One of Fiona and the other of Eloise.

For those who are interested, both pictures were taken with a Canon S90. This camera, when used at wide angle, has an f/2.0 lens. This means the glass directs lots of light into the camera making the use of flash arbitrary. I hate on-camera flash and try to never use it. This camera is a godsend for shooters like me.

I believe today's upgraded version of my camera is the Canon S110. I have found my camera to quite durable and assume the new model is equally as rugged. The model before the present one, the S100, is also a good camera with some advantages over the new model, and if one can find the older model one can save a little money and still have a fine camera.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Claiming to be an attempt at clarifying what exactly is important to Londoners, the ReThink team created the survey shown above. The resulting five statements are fine examples of how not to conduct a survey.

How many folk would say that they don't want to protect the stuff they cherish? Cherish: hold dear, care for, nurture. What a loaded word.

Or who would want planners to design incompete neighbourhoods or unhealthy neighbourhoods?

My guess is that everyone who participates in the survey becomes one of the 10,000 Londoners said to be deeply involved with the ReThink London process.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Shaded suburban street in south west London. Note garages are to the side.

I'm disappointed in ReThink London. Planning a city is a big task and it is a task best done with big plans. But the plans cannot be divisive but must involve everyone in the community, including local politicians. If the members of city council are not on board, the plans are just so many empty promises.

On a corner lot, Byron home's garage is on the side, out of sight.

I find the ReThink process involves small thinking on a grand scale. I call the thinking small because it seems contained, boxed in, trapped in a maze of clichéd urban planning approaches.

This is not to say that small thinking is wrong. It's not. The ideas are just expected: line some core streets with trees, protect the Wortley Village heritage neighbourhood, adhere to placemaking, smart growth and compact development practices.

If the ideas are good why am I so aggravated? Why? Because all too often the ideas seem to spring from text books and not from an intimate knowledge of London. The ideas do not come from the heart. The ideas have no soul.

What I have found surprising is that the city planners do not seem to be familiar with their own city. When urban planning LFP reporter Randy Richmond interviewed planning director John Fleming, and an urban design expert who was a member of the London placemaking team, Richmond was told, "We have to tame the garage."

Hawthorne Village, Milton: Does London have to copy this?

Ah yes, tame the garage. No need to say snout-nosed neighbourhood. We all know what is being talked about, and we all know the new urbanist solutions, such placing all garages at the back of the lot, hiding them in laneways at the rear of the homes.

Richmond reports that planners say it's easy to turn lots on their sides, as in Hawthorne
Village in Milton, making them wide and shallow to allow garages
to be built beside homes rather than in front.

Why go to Milton to sample this approach? Just go to Byron, only fifteen minutes from downtown London. This late twentieth century Eadie and Wilcox subdivision has wide lots, narrow streets and in many cases no sidewalks. Most garages are off to the side of the homes and not jutting out in front. The aging Byron subdivision tamed the garage decades ago.

According to city planners, mandatory sidewalks are so yesterday. "Shared space" is the phrase of the day. Cars and pedestrians share the space and this makes those on foot more alert and encourages motorists to reduce speed.

In many ways this Byron neighbourhood is the wave of the future but built yesterday. Again, a tip o' the hat to Eadie and Wilcox.

This rather impressive London suburb garners little interest from city planners, while Wortley Village and Old South rate a discussion paper examining how to best protect these heritage neighbourhoods.

Is this home less significant than my '20s Petersville home?

I'm all in favour of protecting the character of the Old South or the Woodfield Community east of the core but I question why we stop at protecting a few, select heritage neighbourhoods. Decades before a heritage community became a heritage community it was just a collection of new homes, a subdivision outside the city centre.

I used to live in the former Petersville on the west side of the North Branch of the Thames River. I found my 1920s era home on Wilson Avenue listed by the city as a residence with architectural significance. A small, barn-shaped home, it is an example of a working class home from the days before the Great Depression.

Sadly the stucco has been covered with vinyl siding, the front porch enclosed and the small front yard covered with paving stones. Also, the porch has been notched to allow parking on the front lawn. The notch allows the front of the parked car to slip under the porch. Faux shutters now border the upstairs windows. There is talk of protecting Petersville but that protection will come too late for my former home.

This Byron home has the look my Petersville home once had.

As part of ReThink London I suggest rethinking how we protect neighbourhoods. What's good for Old South is also good for the Woodfield Community or for Byron or Westmount or for the whole city.

I believe the city should have a department that assists homeowners in the upkeep of their homes. These maintenance and reno experts would be able, thanks to computer software, to quickly show homeowners how to best retain the original visual look of their homes. They could point homeowners in the right direction for finding companies capable of doing the required work.

Since moving to Byron I've watch a number of homes undergoing improvements that were anything but improving. If, in 70 years, someone wants to preserve the Eadie and Wilcox Byron subdivision, it may not be possible. With the passing decades the original neighbourhood will be renovated out of existence.

Since suburbs seem to encourage driving rather than walking maybe we should be applying some of the Old South thinking to Byron and other subdivisions.

Note the artist's conception, on the left, showing the finished look.

When a local developer built a new apartment building on a major corner in Wortley Village, stores were located at street level and two levels of luxury apartments were constructed above. This is an old approach, mixing commercial and residential, and very much in tune with the heritage of the Old South neighbourhood.

More and more, box store retailers are being forced to endure having apartments located above in the name of compact development. Why is this not being done in London? At one ReThink event we were told it's being done in Vancouver with great success.

If London is going to grow in a more compact manner, neither Old South nor Byron can be the model. Yet both neighbourhoods deserve respect. Many Londoners see the value of Old South thanks to the patina of age.

If the Eadie and Wilcox development in Byron manages to move into the future intact, it too may gain the heritage patina that comes with time. Maybe then planners will realize that these wide lots complete with large flower gardens and fleshed out with trees and bushes have created an almost park like setting for the residents.

It is a wonderful place to walk and lots of people do. The sidewalks are often filled with folk walking their dogs or simply out for a stroll. Thanks to the pedestrian walkways linking various crescents and courts distances are often shorter on foot than by car.

I have taken this wide path to stroll from my home to the grocery store.

When walking to the grocery store or the bank, I often take a wide path that ends at Colonel Talbot Road. Unfortunately the last 100 yards is just a crude path. One might say, when it comes to walkability the city planners talk the talk but fail to walk the walk.

Duplex in Hawthorne Village in Milton, Ontario.

Some years back when Randy Richmond wrote a piece entitled: A Tale of Two Suburbs - Placemaking, he wrote the piece with the help of city planner John Fleming. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the city planner spoke very highly of Hawthorne Village in Milton, Ontario.

Check out the duplex, on the left, found in Hawthorne Village. There are streets lined with these homes.

Now check out the duplex, below, built by Eadie and Wilcox in Byron fully twenty years before the Milton development. In many ways London developers have been very imaginative.

Show London developers a better way of doing things, an approach that others have found profitable, and with the right planning guidance in place the city might become a better place, maybe even a world class mid-sized city.

A duplex in the Byron subdivision in London.

For background on this post, read the Randy Richmond story published some years ago in The London Free Press. (If the link has not been broken. I've noticed that this happens occasionally.)

About Me

Hello: I'm a retired photojournalist who took a buyout after more than three decades working for Ontario dailies. A fellow has to have some fun and the blogs just grew from there. Feel free to comment as I'd love to make these the best blogs of their kind. Cheers, Rockinon.